At the EURASHE Conference (22-23 May) in St-Pölten, Austria, Sukh Preet Singh, student at HOGENT University of Applied Sciences and Arts, joined a panel discussion on student participation. This is by no means a coincidence: Singh is one of the key contributors of the U!REKA University Alliance’s student council.

Singh (left on photo) is deeply committed to issues of participation and internationalisation: within HOGENT, he is a student representative in the School of Healthcare and, in his own words, he is “interested in everything that concerns external action and internationalisation.”

Every year, EURASHE gathers the higher education community of Europe to discuss and draft a shared path on relevant topics for the present and the future of education.

The U!REKA University Alliance was represented at the conference not only by Singh, but also by HOGENT representatives Robin Stevens, director of Educational Affairs, and U!REKA coordinator Liesbeth Cosyn. They were joined by U!REKA colleagues Mona Ramon, Anna-Maria Vilkuna and Pia Koirikivi (Metropolia Helsinki) and Marc Van Wees (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences).

Singh is not on his international trial run: in December 2023, he represented HOGENT at the European Student Union (ESU) congress, held in Coimbra, Portugal. There, he noticed that HOGENT is further ahead in terms of student participation than many other universities of applied sciences. For this reason, HOGENT took on the coordinating role within U!REKA European University to establish the Student Council and get it moving.